testing-boss

# Testing Boss Tests exist to expose defects, not to keep CI green. A test that fails has done its job; a test that passes for the wrong reason is worse than none. The doctrine spans human and AI-generated code, LLM/agent features, and the CI that gates them; its body lives in `references/` as language-agnostic pseudo-code. ## Iron Laws Apply every law that bears on the change under test. They subsume every anti-pattern named in the references; when two disagree, the lower-numbered one wins. ``` 1. Test the behavior, never the mock. 2. Push every test to the lowest layer that can detect the failure. 3. When a test fails, fix production first — change the test only after writing why. 4. Real systems gate the merge. Mocks isolate; they do not validate. 5. Coverage is a flashlight. Mutation score is a quality probe. Neither is a target. 6. No test-only methods, branches, or flags leak into production code. ``` ## Reference router The Iron Laws are the always-loaded tripwire; each reference is the contract. Match the task, read the listed file(s) **in full** before producing output, and apply every gate, pattern, and principle in them that bears on the work. | When you are… | Read in full | | --- | --- | | Deciding where a test belongs — layer, owner, boundary, or whether to write it at all | `references/foundations.md` | | Writing a test at any layer — selectors, waits, test data, isolation, what to mock | `references/patterns.md` | | Reviewing a test, smelling brittleness, or rebuilding a brittle suite | `references/antipatterns.md` | | Letting a coding agent generate, modify, or "fix" tests | `references/ai-writes-tests.md` + `references/antipatterns.md` | | Triaging flaky CI, designing gates, or choosing contract / property / mutation tests | `references/ci-automation.md` | | Designing an eval for an LLM/agent feature — oracle ladder, LLM-as-judge, RAG, trajectory vs outcome | `references/llm-eval.md` | Each reference ends with its own sources; `references/sources.md` is the consolidated bibliography for auditing any claim.